t 



rilSTQRICAL ALABAMA. 



ADDRESS OF 



'on.- Thomas H. Clark, 



BEFORE 



THE LITERARY SOC/ET/ES 



OF 



A. and M. College. 



AUBURN, JUNE 14, 1893. 



WASHINGTON, D. C. 

THK SAXTON PRINTING CO., 

619 R STREET. 






HISTORICAL ALABAHA. 

'yF ^ ^ 

Young Gentlemen of the Websterian and Wirt Literary 

Societies ; Ladies and Gentlemen : 

I want to talk with you this evening about historical Ala- 
bama. I want to say something about the new method that 
obtains in the treatment of problems of the past and the bear- 
ing of this method upon the history of our own state. I 
want to add a word on the collection and preservation of 
materials which will elucidate that history, and a further 
word upon the importance to ourselves of a more exact knowl- 
edge of the past of our people. 

I have chosen this subject, mainly, because I believe there 
is urgent need that it .should be agitated by every lover of the 
State, and agitated until, if po.ssible, the public mind is 
arou.sed to the importance of at least making an effectual be- 
ginning toward saving for future generations of Alabamians, 
the records of the lives of their ancestors. 

I have chosen it, too, because personal studies covering a 
number of years have brought home to me the regrettable 
neglect of opportunities everywhere in the State to preserve 
historical material. I have chosen to speak here and now 
upon this topic, not alone becau.se this place, for years has 
been one of the cultured centers of Alabama, nor not alone 
because we have here a school that is a beacon light of pro- 
gress throughout the South, but for a further reason, appeal- 
ing strongly to the speaker, that you have a.ssembled here the 
finest collection of books in the State, and have thus, in dem- 
onstrating your right to a foremost place in intellectual 
leadership, furnished the be.st of reasons why a plea for Ala- 
bama's history should be made before you. 

The .students of hi.story among you are familiar with the 
changes wrought in that science by the multiplied agencies of 



what is vagucl}- kiu)\vn as modern thouj^ht. The doctrine of 
evolution, in particular, dissociated as it is at present from 
necessary connection with any special theory of human de- 
scent, has regenerated the mind of man. Under the guidance 
of this law, historical students have addressed themselves to 
making a complete review of the past. They have called to 
their aid workers in ever}' branch of learning and experiment. 
They have deepened and broadened the fine saying of Terence 
tliat he considered nothing human foreign to his sympathies, 
by proclaiming that nothing on earth should be foreign to 
theirs. All life on the planet, all matter, organic or inorganic, 
has been scrutinized to see if added light can be shed upon 
the destiny of man. They have, indeed, found tongues in 
trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones. 

The immediate result of this far spreading activit}' among 
students of ever}- kind upon history itselt has been to abolish 
epochs and ages, and to restore to every part of the great 
human story its rightful share ot interest. The Middle Ages, 
for example, so long neglected, as covered by an impenetrable 
veil, are found to be fruitful years in which were rooted some 
of the most beneficent of modern institutions : while the mo.st 
striking features of that time are themselves traced in their 
origins to a more remote past. The inevitable result of the 
new method has been to exalt peoples above monarchies, the 
triumphs of peace above the triumphs of war, to find in the 
([uiet homes of quiet citizens, the deeper springs whence flow 
the manifold influences that shape and control national life 
Tiiis elTort to correlate all the facts of the .social order has had 
a damaging elTect upon the reputations of many of our famous 
historians. Confining ourselves to a few familiar names of 
the first rank, it has left Hume, the hi.storian, .stranded, 
his power of clear statement having failed to relieve the bald- 
ness of his prejudices and his lack of insight into the real 
problems before him. Macaulay, the master of the mo.st 
lirilliant narative .style in our literature, finds his authority 
sapped by the ceaseless accumulation of facts, that serving as 
their own commentary, prove him to have rea.soned with small 
power upon the causes of the events he describes. Gibbon, 
too, who has left a monumental history for all ages, who 
tramped through time with the .steadiness of a Roman legion, 



inids his accuracy unimpeachcd, only to be judged to lack the 
key, the moderns have, pigmies though they be, compared to 
such a giant in the new method of approach through all 
phenomena, in a method that finds precisely why, at any given 
time a particular institution proved acceptable to a large body 
of men, justifying the faith of its believers by supplying a need 
of the epoch and working beneficently then, though it might 
seeni^otally unsuited to the conditions of the present. Carlyle, 
agafii, that cave of the winds, has already reached the stage 
where his fame fills the earth, and he is not read. He will 
assuredly find the man on horseback but a poor passport to 
the favor of a posterity who will believe even -less than we do 
in the power of the individual citizen to raise up and bless mil- 
lions of his fellow men. His disciple and biographer, Froude, 
in his inaugural address the other day at Oxford, where by 
any odd chance of English politics, he has succeeded Edward 
A. Freeman, proclaimed anew the impossibility of history and 
once more announced the man on horseback as the maker of 
events. In the light of the actual researches made by the 
brilliant gal/axy of the new school, his defense of Carlyle 's 
view of history, sounded as if he told of 

Old, unhappy, far off things. 
And battles long ago. 

Bishop Stubbs, Freeman, Green, Gardiner and Lecky, to 
mention no others among recent English historians, and Win- 
sor, Schouler, Henry Adams, the incomparable Alexander 
Johnston, Woodrow Wilson and Minister Taylor, of our State, 
among the Americans have demonstrated what the new method 
can do in bringing one to an intelligent comprehension of the 
past with its great social and political problems. History has 
been termed one long pleading for liberty ; certainly English 
history has been such a pleading and the notable story as told 
by the scholars I have named of the contributions of English 
speaking races on both sides of the Atlantic to this dearest ol 
all causes, can but animate and inspire. Runnymede, Naseby 
and the Boyne, we are made by them to hail as American 
victories for American principles, just as the elder branch of 
our race must recognize Saratoga and Yorktown as English 
victories for English principles. 

What is of more especial interest to the Southern student is 
the new light, thrown by these investigations, upon the great 



insliUitional struj^j^k- o! the ikw world that iiiarkcd the down- 
fall of slavery. There is a certain cant common in discussions 
of our late war that prompts men on dilTerent sides to pay 
C(mrtly compliments to each other, as iT the polite concession 
carried the observer any way toward a true view of the great 
conflict. The truth is, the Northern man has been prone to 
consider the war too exclusively, as waged to perpetuate 
slavery, wliile the Southerner has entrenched himself behind 
the strict letter of the organic law as interpreted in history 
and by the vSupreme Court, and has denied that he fought for 
slavery's life. It is in the spirit of these two views, that we 
hear an occasional call, a cry rather, an alarm again.st the 
North being proved wrong and the .south right, or the South 
wrong and the North right. There is, I believe, a serious 
effort now' on foot among certain distinguished survivors of 
the war to have a history prepared that shall demonstrate one 
jiarticular section to have been in the right. The God of his- 
tory must smile at the propo.sal. He gives out no briefs. His 
highest commendation is won when unglo.ssed facts are set 
forth. He knows that the judgment and conscience of an\' 
large body of men will never go far wrong, when they have 
to consider a plain ordering of facts, unmixed with the bias of 
advocates. Happily the apparent need for a .sectional history 
grows less and less, as the facts in the controversy are more 
and more illuminated by the researches of the present genera- 
tion of hi.storians. The late Alexander John.ston, in whose most 
untimely death American literature sulTered a grievous lo.ss. 
did more perhaps than any other one student to place our his- 
tory upon a philosophical plane. His work has been taken up 
ably by Woodrow Wilson, Albert Bu.shnell Hart and others, 
with the result that there is emerging from the pa.ssion and 
the bitterness that has characterized the greater portion of 
ourhistory as a Union, intelligiblene.ss of its all, intelligiblene.ss 
that must precede any perfect unification of sentiment. 

Workers like these, and fortunately there are hundreds of 
them throughout the press and in the class room engaged in 
a like w^ork, are restoring the South to the Union in a far more 
lasting way than by the bonds of law. They are at the same 
time restoring the union to the South, if one may so speak, 
by enabling the defenders of the ITnion to enter into, to com- 



preliend, it not to sympathize with, the deeply impeUing 
causes that plunged the South into war. 

What I have said in this imperatively brief way will serve 
to indicate the speaker's point of view in dealing with histor- 
ical Alabama. The whole of ancient history has been re- 
written in the last fifty years ; all of modern history in the last 
thirty years. What has been doing in Alabama during this 
time? What have her own people done to secure the just 
judgment of the world and their own children upon their 
achievements in the past? 

You have observed, doubtless, in the ordinary manual of 
the schools, whether Southern or Northern in origin, that 
Alabama rarely obtains more than two mentions. In the in- 
dex of such a volume you find " Alabama admitted, 1819; 
seceded, 1861." Admission, secession ; the.se words tell the 
whole story as known to the world at large. It is our own 
fault that this is so. By a strange anomaly, nearly all our 
most .serious serious historical labor has. been devoted to 
periods, to people and incidents that have had little direct in- 
fluence upon the real life of Alabama. Our writing has been 
largely episodical. Pickett himself abandoned his pen just as 
he reached the beginning of our story as a State. Meek 
busied himself with Indian life and De Soto's expedition. I 
do not care to attempt to depreciate tiie importance of a knowl- 
edge of Indian life, but I would insist the subject is of more 
importance to the ethnologist than to the historian. The 
Indians highest significance to us is in the effect his presence here 
had upon the manners and customs of our own forefathers. 
As for DeSoto we could well wish the expedition of that 
Spanish free-booter with its accompaniments of savage atro- 
city, had been led elsewhere than through Alabama, if the 
time that has been spent in fixing his route over our soil had 
been used to preserve for us something of the real history of 
the people of our commonwealth. The course of the fir.st 
immigrant wagon that entered Alabama from the North or the 
Ea.st, with its occupants and the utensils they brought, has 
far truer significance to us than everything DeSoto did with- 
in our borders. We must get back to the idea of finding what 
made us that which we are. Whence came our customs, our 
institutions, our laws ? 



Let lis. il we- can, iollow our iimni<.,^raiit lorclathcr as he- 
enters the wiUls ol Alabama, with sturdy sons perhaps, who 
shall remain while the father returns to bring the mother and 
younger children the next year. Ix't us observe them mak- 
ing their first clearing, where corn is to be planted, that mar- 
velous grain that would seem not fortuitously to have been 
placed here to aid in the speedy civilization of a new world. 
Let us sec, when they have found the convenient spring, what 
manner of home will lie built against the winter, how the logs 
will be hewn, how fitted together, how the puncheons will be 
laid, if they choose puncheons rather than the bare earth as a 
lloor ; how the chimney will be constructed, if a chimney shall 
be required, and how the window. We must ob.serve, too, 
what the furniture is that is brought with the family, when the 
family comes, the beds, the chairs, the tables ; we must know 
its scantiness and its simplicity, we must see intimately and 
near at hand the almost squalid conditions of frontier life, if 
we would learn out of what has grown the fire-side of to-day, 
and especially if we would know the prodigious labors of the 
women who presided over these early homes. We must then 
follow our immigrant into the world in his relations with the 
neighbors, whose campfires he saw blazing everywhere in the 
woods, as he returned to his cabin and his clearing. We shall 
follow him in the first elTorts toward as.sociation, in clearing 
new ground, in advancing seed corn saved from the previous 
crop, in felling trees and hewing them out for the home of the 
new-comer ; in their joint plans of protection again.st the 
Indians, in their dealings with the.se ; in their joint pursuit of 
the chase ; in the slow steps bj' which religion and its offices, 
the teacher and his work are provided for until the law itself 
reaches forth to claim its sway and we are face to face with 
one of the thou.sands of frontier communities that together 
have astonished the world by the quickness .with which they 
have subdued a continent. We should then take one step for- 
ward, to find our nascent commonwealth, dependent yet upon 
the general government, but growing so rapidly as to amaze 
even a race of immigrants and prepared in a few short years to 
put on the garments of statehood. With admi.ssion into the 
Union, as we .shall see, the smaller eddies of a territorial life 
are drawn into the more powerful currents of the larger life 



around, just tlien becoming national in scope. Alabama 
entered in the midst of the agitation accompaning the Mis- 
souri compromise. This was the agitation that startled Jeffer- 
son like a fire-bell at night and that continued in various 
forms until the Union was almost sundered thereby. 

The political excitement that largely characterized the first 
four decades of our histor}' as a state has obscured for us the 
social processes of the time until it will now be difficult to re- 
cover and appraise them. It remains a reproach to us that 
the most notable of these, slavery, has never been described 
from our standpoint on an extensive and accurate scale. 
Speaking more particular!}^ of Alabarra, apart from manj^ 
other influences at work in the formation of the character of 
her people between 1819 and 1861, slavery was a most poten- 
tial factor and as such deserves a careful and candid treat- 
ment at the hands of some one of her sons. We have in the 
several works of Frederick Law Olmsted an unfriendh; but 
powerful picture, the most .striking, in fact in any literature of 
the intimate, social and econon^ic life of a people. It is out 
of the question now that an equally faithful, but friendly pic- 
ture can be made, for Olmsted wrote with his eye on the object, 
but very much could be done with the aid of 01m.sted himself 
by the cautious use of DeBow's Review, and such a volume 
as the " Memoirs of a Southern Planter," by Susan Dabncy 
Smedes, and more especially by the aid of hundreds of men 
and women, happily still amongst us, who vividl}- recall the 
latter years of slavery. The student of slavery in this State 
will find an interest in noting the changes in opinion by which 
Alabama, that at one time enacted a law forbidding the im- 
portation of slaves from other States, comes at last to .stand 
along side of South Carolina in the ardor with which the in- 
stitution of slavery was defended. He will note, too, the 
effect of .slaver}' upon the movement of population, upon the 
economy of the soil, upon th? slave and upon the master. The 
poor white trash who have not bj2n honored by us with any 
notice whatever except in the repetition of the sneer of the slave 
who 1 el'evcd himself tl.cir .superior, would merit separate 
treatment, for we have in that cla.ss a striking product of the 
.slave system. Not the least wonderful feature of that social 
order was the mistress of the slave. One can hardlv dare to 



8 

li<>l)(.-, \v!i:il(.\tr may he our c<»in|K'nsnti()iis, that newer limes 
can preserve for us the enerj^y, the executive ability the sov- 
ereign graces, the exalted character that marked so many of 
the women who aided in the management of our great slave 
estates. 

There would yet remain in any adequate treatment of his- 
torical Alabama to tell of the share taken by our State in the 
war The consummate valor of her soldiers, along with that of 
her sister Southern States, has given the grey -jacketed Con- 
federate a secure place in the annals of the world. The his- 
torian watchful of the true cour.se of events, would continue 
to .seek in the homes and the fields for the phenomena which 
should indicate what the future was to be. Even the excesses 
of the reconstruction era would not blind him to what was go- 
ing on during that period on ten thousand hillsides and in ten 
thousand valleys, as the slow work of recuperation from slav- 
ery and xyar was being carried forward. And at present the 
history of Alabama is to be found less in the noise and 
clamor of politics, than, in the quiet work, for instance, of an 
institution like this, where the youth of the State are trained 
and sent forth to aid in its mighty development. 

I have said enough, I trust, to awaken in you, if it needed 
awakening, a .sense of the higher value of our State's history 
when considered apart from .stories and theories nu^re or le.ss 
legendary in character. 

What can be said to enforce the importance of preserving 
the records that remain of this real life of our people ? 

In Brewer and Garrett we have a quantity of biographical 
material that will be found of priceless value to him who 
.s.riously attempts to cast the history of Alabama in a literary 
form. Mr. H()dg.son's "Cradle of the Confederac)'," is more 
and more resorted to by students for the light it throws upon 
the genesis of the .secession idea, and Alabama's contribution 
to that idea. We have also a few county histories — Riley's 
Conecuh, Ball's Clarke and Blue's Montgomery, that embody 
a great deal of intetesting material, while town histories of 
Kufaula, Montgomery, Marion and Demopolis furni.sh forth 
many valuable facts. Individuals, too, here and there, like 
Dr. Wyman of the State University, Dr. Riley of Howard 
College, Mr. Owen of Bessemer and Mr. Wm. (xarrott Brown, 



ArchivivSt ol Harvard CoUe^i^c Library-, arc doing admirahk- 
work in privately collecting material for future use, while 
dailies like the Advertiser, The Age-Herald and The Register 
and weeklies like the Grove Hill Democrat, the Troy Messen- 
ger, The Greenville Advocate and others are doing excellent 
service in calling out contributions from their readers upon 
various points in State history. 

There ought to be no abatement in this good work, and yet, 
withal, the situation calls for more systematic effort. We can 
hardly dare hope to see an organization in each county de- 
voted to the collection of historical material, to the preserva- 
tion of all relics bearing upon the past history of the county. 
But is it too much to expect that the State itself should inter- 
vene in its own highest interest, its own self-respect fn fact, 
and make provision for a State Historical Society r* The sum 
annually required for the maintenance of such an organiza- 
tion would be a trifle compared to the lasting benefits such a 
body would confer. It would be the first duty of the State 
Historical Society to repair as far as possible the mistakes of 
the past by collecting and preserving everything possible that 
illustrates the present. It should purchase annually, or semi- 
annually, by way of beginning, bound volumes of every daily 
paper published in Alabama and bound volumes of a dozen or 
more representative weeklies. To these should be added some 
half dozen dailies published elsewhere in the Union. The 
.society could then undertake the collection of materials, now 
wasting, files of old newspapers, complete or broken, manu- 
.scripts like that of Pickett's uncompleted and unpublished 
history of the Southwest, or the Stiggins manuscript, now 
unaccountably in the possession of a gentlemen in Madison, 
Wis.; the correspondence whenever it can be found and 
secured of distinguished men like King, Bagby, Lewis, 
Yancey and Hou.ston ; memoirs, diaries, official records of re- 
ligious and social organizations, and conversations with old 
citizens. The mere existence of such a society with a per- 
manent home and supported by the State would induce many 
who would not otherwise part with historical material, to give 
or to sell to it, assured as they would be that their generosity 
had taken the fittest po.ssible form. It would of cour.se be 
one of the main features in the work of such a .society to in- 



10 

cite- its lucnihcrs to make special rescarclics on ^ivcn topics, to 
pry into dusty archives — I am happy to hear Governor Jones 
has projected the publication of a selection from those of the 
State — to explore the recesses of every Court of Probate, to go 
throujjjh the old acts of the Lej^islaturc, the journals of both 
Houses, the Supreme Court reports, the records of Congress, 
unhasting, unresting, to seek everywhere for facts to illustrate 
the life of our people. 

A State-supported Historical Societ}', I am bound to believe 
would be heartily welcomed and sustained by the enlightened 
judgment of Alabama. I believe it would profound!}- stimu- 
late the study it would be founded to promote and it would 
save us from the continuing .shame under which we now rest, 
of an almo.st total blindness to our past. 

Do you ask what is the profit of it all ? Or wor.se, perhaps, 
do you echo Walpole's cynicism, " Read me not hi.story ; his- 
torj' is a lie?" It is true we can never recover the pa.st as 
a whole. We shall blunder in our observations oi it and in our 
inferences about it. We do the same thing with the present, 
however. And surely that man is best equipped to judge the 
present who be.st knows what the past can teach him. There is 
not a political, an economic, or a social problem now confront- 
ing Alabama that would not be easier of .solution if the re- 
searches I have indicated as proper to be made, had already 
been made and the results were now in our pos.se.ssion. Let 
us, I insist, if we can, widely di.sseminate historical truth 
among our people, in order that our thoughts and actions shall 
be marked bj- the sobriety that should distinguish a just, proud 
and capable citizen.ship. 

It is not alone either as a guide to conduct that our .studies 
will aid us. We sometimes wonder that literature does not 
ilourish at the South. It can never flouri.sli .so long as it is not 
rooted in the actual conditions of our social order. Our writ- 
ers, in the main, it would seem, have busied themselves with 
dialect, or if in poetry they abandon dialect, it is only to olTcr 
us a reilcction of what has been read and not what has been 
actually felt or comprehended. There is urgent need among 
us to recall the sage advice of Goethe to young Germany, 
"Here or nowhere is your America." The new world of 
Alabama lies before tho.se of our ambitious young men and 



IJ 

women who would win a name in literature, but they must 
tell the world, not what they have been hearing about the 
world itself, but what is daily happening in their own midst. 
Let but the immagination touch the past of our State or 
touch the present with the light that never was on sea or land, 
and I feel sure the great world would gladly attend the 
story. We shall have a literature when we learn who we are, 
where we are, what we are doing, when we take our own lives 
as the deepest of realities to the writer, the nature about us as 
such a reality and reproduce these in our books. The study 
of State history is then the first step toward the foundation of 
a State literature. 

Let me add, in conclusion, that the con.sideration above all 
others that should weigh with us in this matter is that to 
know the history of the State is to deepen state pride. No 
one can be unmindful of the striking change that has has come 
over the relations of the State to the general government of 
the Union. I have no reference now to the gradual accretion 
of power in Washington, but to the dwarfing etfect upon the 
individual State of having always before and in full view of 
sixty-five millions the vast operations of this most powerful of 
human governments. We who have seen a Governor of South 
Carolina resign his post to accept an assistant secretaryship of 
the Treasury, find it difhcult to orient ourselves sufficiently to 
know why John Hancock, as Governor of Massachu.settss, dis- 
puted for precedence with George Washington, President of 
the United States, and why John Jay should abandon the 
Chief Justiceship of the Supreme Court of the United States 
to offer as a candidate for the Governorship of New York. I 
like to think of this sturdy pride in one's own State. Would 
that we had more of it now. Not, indeed, because one would 
detract from the majesty of the Union, but because as the 
Union is not more powerful than the States that compose it, its 
perm^^nance and value will be in exact proportion to the vital- 
ity of the several States. To have a nobler Union we must 
have nobler States and in the interest of the Union as well as 
of the States, pride in one's State ; for us pride in Alabama, 
.should be cherished and deepened by all means that patriot 
love can command. In a spirit of unaffected devotion to the 
Union, we might wish for the time when all Alabamians 



8 



12 



'/ 



sli(»ul(l jirovc in tlicir love lor Alabama and her histor}' what 
the great historian of the ancients said of the Athenians, that 
their true selves were their minds and these were never so 
truly their own as when engaged about the welfare of their 
country. 

Let me commend Alabama and Alabama's history to you for 
love and interest of the same exalted kind. 



